Pankaj Ghemawat Quotes

Sometimes, I think there's a lack of ambition in me. But then sometimes, I think, no, you can, like William Blake said, you know, see heaven in a grain of sand. If you look really, really closely at a situation, you can find almost endless interest in it.

In America we have across the country, the entire world.

Everyone connected to the internet acts globally. it is wildly foolish to think locally.

Nations have the wrong granularity. They’re too small to be global and too big to be local, and all they can think about is competing.

I think of myself as a global citizen.

I think it's really important to give yourself a very big question that you're working on that you can come home to.

Do you create anything, or just criticize others work and belittle their motivations?

You have two choices: You can come down from the mountain and spend the rest of your days thinking it was so beautiful there, or you can create a vision, look upward, see the next mountain, and start the climb all over again.

You can do better than this.” The best slogan I can think of to leave with the kids of the U.S.A. would be “We can . . . and we’ve got to . . . do better than this.

I think that leadership more than anything is about setting a course and describing a vision for people.

I think looking at your own life, on- and offscreen, you can motivate anything, or you can delude yourself into anything.

I think a dream is just a suggestion to start something out, do something.

I've always disliked words like inspiration. Writing is probably like a scientist thinking about some scientific problem, or an engineer about an engineering problem.

I think Splash made people realize that I was still alive, and I think I inspired a lot of people. I have people coming up to me all the time in the airport saying, "Hey, you inspired me to learn how to swim!" "You inspired me to start moving around more." "You inspired me to start doing more for myself." So that was good. But mostly I took it because nobody had given me a job. And you know what really matters in life, right?

I wish I could recall with clarity the impulse that compelled me to help bring this camp into being. I'd be pleased if I could announce a motive of lofty purpose. I've been accused of compassion, of altruism, of devotion to Christian, Hebrew, and Muslim ethic, but however desperate I am to claim ownership of a high ideal, I cannot. I wanted, I think, to acknowledge Luck; the chance of it, the benevolence of it in my life, and the brutality of it in the lives of others, made especially savage for children because they may not be allowed the good fortune of a lifetime to correct it.

I think it’d be a great honor to be able to influence someone’s joy.

Sometimes a fog will settle over a vessel's deck and yet leave the topmast clear. Then a sailor goes up aloft and gets a lookout which the helmsman on deck cannot get. So prayer sends the soul aloft; lifts it above the clouds in which our selfishness and egotism befog us, and gives us a chance to see which way to steer.

Any idea can be a great idea if you think differently, dream big and commit to seeing it realized

I don't think where people come from is that important. It doesn't matter if you come from reality TV. The question is whether you can inspire people.

Properly speaking, global thinking is not possible... Look at one of those photographs of half the earth taken from outer space, and see if you recognize your neighborhood. The right local questions and answers will be the right global ones. The Amish question, what will this do to our community? tends toward the right answer for the world.

I also have to speak out for people around me who are afraid, who think it is not worth it or who have totally given up hope. So I want to set an example: you can do it and this is OK, to speak out.

It is in the thousands of days of trying, failing, sitting, thinking, resisting, dreaming, raveling, unraveling that we are at our most engaged, alert, and alive.

I think the artist's job throughout history has been to tell - to say things that people are inspired by.

At best, I think of a director as a magnet. You get all the metal fillings in all the individual actors and crew, and get those filings moving toward your magnetic direction.

You can have a lot of New York and still see what's going on in the rest of the world, I think - like in China.